KsMIRT: ice and fire

 K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month(ish) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format. Behold, finished in February.

This month:
True Detective season 4 - HBO/Max 6 episodes
Mr. & Mrs. Smith season 1 - Amazon Prime 10 episodes

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I had watched Season 1 of True Detective way back in 2014, but I honestly cannot tell you what I thought of it. The reason I write this blog is to record my thoughts on some of the pop culture I consume because otherwise those thoughts will be lost to the ether. My little peanut brain can only hold so much information... like a peanut-sized amount. I treat this blog like Guy Peirce's skin in Memento. If it's not tattooed here, I'm not really going to remember it.

What I know is I didn't watch Season 2, nor Season 3.  I don't know if that reflected as much on a dislike of Season 1 or if it was just the critical drubbing Season 2 received prior or early in its release was enough to put me off the subsequent seasons.  

What I recall of season 1 is thinking Alexandra Daddario was far too young to be having sex with Woody Harrelson, and also something about Lovecraft's King in Yellow being mixed up in all of it. Again, I don't know if those little impressions were good or bad.  Show creator Nic Pizzolatto did not become "a name to look out for", one way or the other.

But this new season of True Detective, subtitled Night Country, starring Jodie Foster and MMA fighter Kali Reis, hooked me from the first commercial. First, it's set in the depths of winter in the far north (Alaska), and desolate, wintery settings are my favourite. Second, it's set in the 30 days of night scenario, where, because of the location on the Earth's axis, there's no sunlight for a month every year. It's a conceit that hasn't been used nearly enough (the opposite setting, of days of no darkness has been used I think more often). Third, well, it's not Pizzolatto in charge, so, maybe the critical disappointment from Season 2  that probably tainted the reception of Season 3 would be scrubbed clean. And fourth, I mean, Jodie Foster, incapable of delivering a bad performance.

Issa Lopez acts as showrunner, writer (or co-writer) and director on every episode of the season and that creative consistency is everything. This is rock-solid storytelling from start to finish, with everything, and I mean everything, feeling entirely consistent and unified for the whole run. While six episodes, it really does feel like it could be a 5-hour movie because of the visual uniformity.  There's also no downtime, no filler, no stalling for time.

The first episode wastes no time in introducing its more metaphysical elements, and it definitely isn't being cagey or shy about it. But it's also very sharp in how it incorporates into the story. The setting is a Native American community that has expanded because of mining operations, but the mine's environmental impact on the town has been having increasingly severe repercussions. The ancestral community and the new community clash over protests around the mine.  With a large indigenous cast of characters, it would have been easy enough to lean into just Native spirituality, but it's clear that there's more going on beyond that, and the bleed between them makes it hard to distinguish, intentionally.

 It's a murder mystery, it's a horror story, it's a political statement, it's a police procedural, and, by nature of a largely female cast and writing crew, it's a complex feminist story as well. 

The story starts with a singular mystery, the disappearance of all members of a remote research station, only to be found naked, frozen together in the ice, looking like a mutated mass of flesh. But as Foster's Chief Danvers investigates this crew, it dredges up a cold case from years earlier that wound up severing her partnership with Reis' Navarro, who moved on becoming a State Trooper. 

The reunion of Danvers and Navarro is enough of a story on its own, but this True Detective tale encompasses the whole town, and there is a pretty broad cast of characters that we meet, and have some role to play in everything involved. It feels like we've met half the town by the time the series is finished, and we certainly have a clear idea of the politics at play, and the conflicts that persist.  

We get deep into Danvers and Navarro's family life, as well as Danvers' new protege, Officer Pete Prior (a breakout performance from Finn Bennett), whose dad (John Hawkes) was originally slated to be Chief before Danvers was assigned, and the contention is palpable.

Night Country is an incredibly deep and thoughtful series, presenting hard edged, flawed characters with a richness that allows you to dislike them, but understand them, and root for them to not just figure out what's going down, but also figure out their own lives as well.

This was an incredible series from start to finish, and watching week to week was somehow both frustrating and satisfying. Each episode is so densely structured that they're filling on their own, but that still doesn't stop them from just seeming like a course of the overall meal.

The finale could have went many different directions. It had the potential to go full blown action or horror spectacular, but it instead goes the detective route without forgetting that the metaphysical still is woven completely throughout the story. It does wind up being satisfying in its resolution without demystifying its paranormal aspect. 

I may not remember Season 1, but this one will stick with me for a long time. Foster does not disappoint in the slightest, playing an exceptionally traumatized character (and hurt people hurt people) while Reis is just an incredible presence who should be allowed to do whatever she wants after this. An immediate favourite performer. I'm very likely buying this one on Blu-ray, because it's worth revisiting.

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Speaking of not remembering things... the 2005 Doug Liman-directed, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie-starring film Mr. & Mrs. Smith holds absolutely no space in my brain. I recall seeing it in theatre when it came out, but I've never revisited it. What I recall is the conceit of the film, two mercenaries, married to each other, are advised they need to kill one another. Watching a film where Brad Pitt physically fights his wife has not aged well as a concept. 

There was a Mr. & Mrs. Smith Hitchcock film in the 1940's but that was a screwball comedy about a warring couple. Then there was a short-lived Mr. & Mrs. Smith action/espionage series in the 90's starring Scott Bakula and Maria Bello that finds two special agents having to pretend they're married and do missions. 

Strangely, this latest Mr. & Mrs. Smith, created and developed by Donald Glover with Francesca Sloane, is deemed to be based off the 2005 film, which gave no credit to the 90's series, even though there's direct parallels there.

This series seemed to come out of nowhere. It's a problem with AmazonPrime where they seemed to have put all their promotional money into a failed Lord of the Rings series and nothing else in the year since. I never seem to know when anything is debuting or returning to Prime. It was actually a TV reviewer I follow that tipped me off to Mr. & Mrs. Smith's premiere two days before it dropped.

I'm always up for more Glover. The love for the Community cast runs fairly deep. But Glover's Atlanta was one of the most creative and experimental series in the past decade that fanned that flame of fandom. Mr. and Mrs. Smith doesn't take a lot of creative risks certainly not as many as Atlanta, but enough to feel elevated from, say, a network action-oriented series.

Glover is the known quantity, the draw, but his co-star, Maya Erskine, is the kaboom, the mind-blowing explosive stick of dynamite that makes the show feel revelatory.  It is a two-hander of a series, where both performers receive top billing, but it does feel like Erskine's show. She seems to be doing the heavier lifting acting and character-wise.

Jane and John Smith are each, independently recruited to a non-descript organization to run high-risk operations. They are selected and partnered and given their new identities as well as a gorgeously renovated brownstone in New York that seems well outside almost everyone's affordability rating.  They are given their missions by an unknown contact they call "HiHi". The first mission is a literal cake walk, but not what it seems and gives them a sense of what they're in for, as well as the tidbit of 3 fails remaining.

Across 10 episodes, the Smiths actually develop feelings for each other, and a genuine partnership is formed, but the missions start exposing their weaknesses as a couple and threaten to tear them apart in the end. Ultimately, if you're aware of the "source" film, they're going to start trying to kill one another, but when it happens it's still pretty shocking, because they do such a good job of wanting these crazy assassins to work it out.

I loved this show. It's full of wonderful action, comedy, romance and intrigue bits, plus it sets up the stakes from the get-go that play out delightfully. Glover leans into his charm, wearing it as a mask with just cracks of vulnerability beneath. He's playing at being a cool agent, but once we really come to realize what a mamma's boy John is, it really spells out his personality. Erskine is, as noted, an explosive performer... she sells everything she needs to sell, including her diagnosed psychopathy, yet it's the way she plays her detached coldness that makes Jane so completely likeable. We're going to be flooded with Erskine as a result of this.

There's some wonderful guest stars in this, including Parker Posey, John Turturro, Michaela Coel, Sarah Paulson, and more, but my favourite was Ron Perlman who is the Smith's escort mission in Italy. As they're young in their "marriage" the conversation of kids comes up, and, hilariously, Perlman basically acts like a toddler throughout the episode, testing both of their parenting mettle. It's a freaking delight, and Perlman kills the assignment without being too cartoony about it.

It's a great looking show, handing the romance and the action with equal style and verve. The globetrotting aspect must have made it an expensive shoot, but all the different locations are shot beautifully. Each episode has a mini-movie feel, but they also all chain with each other so that consuming them is all too easy.

The first season leaves a second season teased up and a full possibility. Hell, we still know absolutely nothing about the organization they work for by the end of the final episode.  With Amazon dropping the whole season in one shot, it just means the wait for another season is going to feel that much longer.  Lady Kent and I wanted more immediately upon completion.